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Single Idea 7582

[filed under theme 23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 6. Authentic Self ]

Full Idea

Striving to become what one already is is a very difficult task, the most difficult of all, because every human being has a strong natural bent and passion to become something more and different.

Gist of Idea

Becoming what one is is a huge difficulty, because we strongly aspire to be something else

Source

Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Subjective')

Book Ref

Kierkegaard,Søren: 'A Kierkegaard Anthology', ed/tr. Bretall,Robert [Princeton 1946], p.208

A Reaction

Presumably most people continually drift between vanity and low self-esteem, and between unattainable daydreams and powerless immediate reality. That creates the stage on which Kierkegaard's interesting battle would have to be fought.

The 29 ideas with the same theme [changing one's self into something more genuine]:

6231 There is a self-determing power in each person, which makes them what they are [Cudworth]
20759 Feelings are prior to intelligence; we should be content to live with our simplest feelings [Rousseau]
23236 Freedom means making yourself become true to your essential nature [Fichte]
8930 The in-itself must become for-itself, which requires self-consciousness [Hegel]
7073 I am a creative nothing, out of which I myself create everything [Stirner]
5274 Young Hegelians proposed changing our present consciousness for liberating critical consciousness [Marx/Engels]
22095 There are aesthetic, ethical and religious subjectivity [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle]
20314 People want to lose themselves in movements and history, instead of being individuals [Kierkegaard]
7582 Becoming what one is is a huge difficulty, because we strongly aspire to be something else [Kierkegaard]
6869 Nietzsche thinks the human condition is to overcome and remake itself [Nietzsche, by Ansell Pearson]
2874 Man is the animal whose nature has not yet been fixed [Nietzsche]
20275 Most people think they are already complete, but we can cultivate ourselves [Nietzsche]
20132 To become what you are you must have no self-awareness [Nietzsche]
7150 By developing herd virtues man fixes what has up to now been the 'unfixed animal' [Nietzsche]
7177 Virtues from outside are dangerous, and they should come from within [Nietzsche]
4513 Virtuous people are inferior because they are not 'persons', but conform to a fixed pattern [Nietzsche]
20317 Mundane existence is general, falling under universals, but Existens is unique to individuals [Jaspers]
20319 We want the correct grasp on being that is neither solipsism nor absorption in the crowd [Jaspers]
20315 'Existenz' is the potential being, which I could have, and ought to have [Jaspers]
15581 Dasein is always only that which it has chosen to be [Heidegger]
20453 Heidegger says we must either choose an inauthentic hero, or choose yourself as hero [Heidegger, by Critchley]
22232 Authenticity is taking responsibility for a situation, with all its risks and emotions [Sartre]
20760 Sincerity is not authenticity, because it only commits to one particular identity [Sartre, by Aho]
22231 We flee from the anguish of freedom by seeing ourselves objectively, as determined [Sartre]
3844 Existentialism says man is whatever he makes of himself [Sartre]
20754 It is dishonest to offer passions as an excuse [Sartre]
22230 Sartre gradually realised that freedom is curtailed by the weight of situation [Sartre, by Daigle]
6690 A standard problem for existentialism is the 'sincere Nazi' [Graham]
20753 The self is constituted by its choices made within a social context [Aho]